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Silver surfers cause worldwide internet growth

The Pew Global Attitudes Project has released a report illustrating the rapid growth of internet use globally. Much of this growth can be put down to more women and over 50′s coming online across Western Europe.

The report also contains some interesting figures on internet growth across a range of countries, including Russia, China and India, comparing data from 2004 and 2005.

Usage has risen across the board with 35% (rise of 16%) for Russia and for India 21%(rise of 15%).

The Netherlands has the most mature market, with 84% of its inhabitants going online. They are followed by Canada (79%), UK (76%), US (76%)and Germany (67%).

In terms of access Netherlands again came out on top (72%) with established western markets close behind. Access has risen though for Poland (20%, up 18%), China (33%, up 14%), Russia (15%, up 8%) and India (14%, up 11%).

Russian users are still overwhelmingly young people. Only 3% of Russians aged from 50 to 65 have access to the Internet. To compare, in the USA and Canada 68% from this age group use the Internet, in the UK this index is equal to 67%, in Germany – 53%, in France – 52% and in Poland – 22%.

2 Responses to Silver surfers cause worldwide internet growth

The first chart they have on that report is for the the number of people simply using computers. The second question (the chart above) is for the number of that group who use the web/or email.

It doesn’t say anywhere the second question is a subset of the first. In fact all the statements in the article seem to point to more general conclusions:

Solid majorities in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe are internet savvy, but in Pakistan and Indonesia, fewer than 10% say they go online as do only 15% of Russians and 14% of Indians. About a third in Poland, Turkey and China say they access the internet.

33% does seem a little high though doesn’t it. I wonder how large their sample was and more importantly – which major city they took it in?

In Russia we’ve had some research recently from ROMIR pointing to figure of 17% of population. So these figures looked in the right ballpark for us here.

I wonder if the percentage is for computer users that go online in the Internet users chart above. In other words 33% of China’s computer users go online. This wasn’t made clear in the report but there is no way that China has that type of penetration rate for Internet usage.